We once had to make an interface for a big German car manufacturers new car. It showed texts about things and stuff (I really don’t remember). The target was an embedded browser for which a not really accurate emulator existed.
I could only develop against that emulator. They could not supply us with a computer running the real thing. For testing I had to go to a secret locked garage where the real car stood with obfuscation decals so that competitors wouldn’t be able to see the design. It was really tight and uncomfortable to work in when I had to debug something only occuring on the real hardware. And I was lucky that I had cellphone reception at all in the garage.
One or two years later after I had left that team I saw a colleague finally having basically a full car’s cockpit in his office for testing, so things got a little bit better.
My point is, car companies work differently than computer guys. I hope this project won’t die amid their inflexibility.
I’ve noticed some problems with how user interfaces are designed on cars. Especially google maps. Tiny hard to reach buttons with margins separating them. Sure, it looks sleeker, but when one is driving and cannot easily look at the screen, that’s the least of our concerns
Physical buttons will now be required in the EU, so hopefully that problem will be less.
My ID4 was horrible with that. Only oversensitive capacitive touch buttons and an extremely laggy touchscreen.
This isn’t a “control the air conditioner with a touch screen” scenario. I’m actually specifically thinking of the tiny button to mute/unmute direction announcements
Yeah, the knob to control everything was a big reason why developing for the emulator sucked. With the emulator you could just click on buttons and links, where in the real thing the users would be stuck with an awkward knob they’d turn to select stuff.
I loved that ‘big awkward knob’ or the ‘idrive controller’ in the BMWs, now sadly it’s gone, so I take mine and everyone else’s life in my hands to zoom in or out on navigation, or to find a setting the car insists is default and I have to opt out of on every single journey. Knob, reach down, without taking eyes off road, feel the position, click turn idents to know how many menu levels you’re in, push down to select. You can’t feel a touchscreen to find button three of five, it literally forces you to look at it to operate. So unsafe!
Removed by mod
FOSS cars when?
Sono Sion looked promising but couldn’t get enough funding
Removed by mod
You wouldn’t steal a car
Let’s see if they can do that before collapsing. The past decades they’ve failed to innovate and keep up. The only decent cars were utterly overpriced. If they want to survive they’ll have to make good EVs for a lot cheaper. Otherwise China will take over that market. And I am hoping no government will try to tarif Chinese EVs just to prevent people from getting easy access to them.
Ehm is everyone forgetting that the Chinese ev makers pay their employees a tenth of what a German car maker would? On top of that they’re getting incredible amount of subsidising from the government? The scope is the collapse of any manufacturer outside of China by flooding with most affordable cars and then use the monopoly to gain back the losses.
It’s the fault of German (and other) manufacturers for putting any subsidies into their own pockets than using them to offer their cars for a lower price.
China is paying lower wages because of the difference between currency value.
2030: year of the FOSS car.
GenIVI already tried.
